


BBCSH 'Binary'  [R] 2/2

by tigersilver



Series: Falling [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Aftermath, Angst, M/M, Rape/Non-con References, Triggery, What is not forgiveness but is?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-10
Updated: 2013-03-10
Packaged: 2017-12-04 21:25:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/715257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigersilver/pseuds/tigersilver
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>End. Conclusion. All I have to say on the matter?<br/>Not all they do, you may take that to Gringotts, damn it. Not ever all they do, when life is a dialogue. Always questions, questions...and this, and then... that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	BBCSH 'Binary'  [R] 2/2

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lonerofthepack](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonerofthepack/gifts), [shantismurf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shantismurf/gifts), [ivyblossom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyblossom/gifts), [Resonant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Resonant/gifts).



All the will in the world will not prevent a human body from reacting to stress. Duress.  


**[[You? Like this? Really, Sherlock?]]**

  
“Can you even [despair] hear me?”  


[[Not . You’re not…the one I know.]]

  
“John?” [John][John….] ”Oh, don’t, John, not now. Not when I’m back again—I’ve come back again—please not now. Don’t now. Please?”  


[[You are not. You’re… not **mine**. You’re different and **alien** and—I. **No**.]]

  
[Clamping teeth above; Sherlock hears them grinding, and can recall clearly the solidly-set jaw that produced that noxious grating sound. He knows John, forwards and backwards, and that is a tell, of the very worst sort. Hullo, Doom.]  


**[[Alien.]]**

  
“John, don’t—John, please.”  
  
No…please. Not John Watson. Not John Watson. Sherlock needs John, does the world not comprehend that? He can’t go, he won’t go; he’s a ghost already, in the making…[Does not John realize this?]  


**[[…Sherlock?]]**

  
“Do not. Just…do not? John?”  
  
[He’s fresh out of ‘sorrys’; descended into rank pleading.]  
  
In all his life, as a pirate, as an imbecile, socially, Sherlock’s cried just the three occasions, maybe. His eyes, they were only wet atop St Bart’s.  
  
“I beg you.”  


**[[Sherlock. Sherlock— _think_. When a ghost rapes you, when a dead man fucks you over—and over, Sherlock (my head, my head, my arse)(you never do stop, do you?), it makes it no less Bad.]]**

  
His eyes, Sherlock’s eyes that he uses, that he needs to see, his tools in trade. They’ve been perhaps a bit damp here and there over the last three years, never more than that; it’s atrocious what’s happening to his eyes now. His eyes are weeping, strained, hot and gritty. And the corneas are likely red-veined and the world’s gone blurry and he can’t detect much past his own sorry sniveling, but John doesn’t necessarily see the whole of it, what a shabby picture Sherlock makes of himself, blubbering and lolling his head about in John’s lap like some puling infant. Impulse, unfiltered, in dissonance, all of this.  
  
“I couldn’t have. (Have stopped myself, climbing right inside you, that’s what people do, John. Can’t you— can you not see?) John?”  
  
[‘Not wanted you, not needed you, not—not.](Do you hear me, John? I could not have prevented it. ‘Boast-A-Lot’, John—I was caught! I have failed you. I have failed me, John.)  


**[[Sherlock…?]]**

  
And why—why? Does not John say a word? [But only breathe, in and out. Dull, and so important, like that. Always respire and exhale, John—never don’t breathe.]  


**[[Are you…really, Sherlock? Still...him? Still…mine? That man. The one. Mine.]]**

  
“I…I can’t have helped it. It was—and you were there—and I wanted. Wasn’t thinking. John—I wasn’t even thinking! Do you know how—John, how it was?”  


**[[Cannot be. Too many—too late, too little. Don’t—please don’t cry and cling; that’s not like you, Sherlock.]]**

  
Not a word.  
  
“I was nothing—nothing more than a body, John! Transport!”  
  
“You are—you, John.”  


**[[Is all I can say.]]**

  
“…Impulse. Something—something went wrong, a chemical reaction, John. I am resistant, but—“  
  
“Not. This. Time.”  
  
“…Sorry, so sorry. I regret—“  
  
It’s a void, the greatest one, and it’s as unpleasantly prickly-painful as the teapot shards he’s shook out of his cheap trousers. As the damp-sticky was, on his penis, after—as the look on John Watson’s dear face was, as he viewed (not viewed) the flat’s blinds, for hours, positively hours on end, all the time Sherlock was sleeping in his bed, and only grudgingly allowed to even be there.  
  
“Do you not see? It’s so obvious! JOHN!”

**[[No, no.]]**

 

  
**[[** No **.]]**  


  
There’s a gap. In the universe. Sherlock cannot possibly begin to fill it. He is not elastic. He is no hero. There are no wings to carry him.  


**[[No…no. Can’t be.]]**

“I…ugh!”  
  
Sherlock, he weeps, and not so gently now, into John’s clean trousers. Snuffles and makes a mess, what with the nose drool and the dribble oozing from the corners of his lips when he opens them wide in a silent shout. It’s a bit…it’s a bit soggy. And sad. He’s felt sad before, this is infinitely compounded, this sort of sad. Yes. Bodily fluids bloody everywhere. Hasn’t he done that enough, already? Why more, now? Oh…why?  
  
“Don’t?”  
  
So—he waits, stuffing back the sobs (they are impossibly impertinent; they’ll do his cause no good.). [As he has been, all this time. Waiting. ]  
  
It takes ages, relatively.  
  
Sherlock wishes he weren’t so aware of time passing, but then again…all the time spent touching John is Good Time, and he doesn’t want it end. He rubs his head in, smearing stray tears and maybe some saliva and snot, but John doesn’t seem to care for that and both the denims and the shirt Sherlock’s pulled untucked from John’s belt are absorbent and forgiving.)  


**[[Is…it? Sherlock? Life’s  a big bloody question, all of it, every part. My time spent ticking over and waiting to breathe. Your time, off somewhere; what were you even doing with it, your time?**

****

**How far away had you gone, Sherlock. ]]**

“Let me…”  


**[[Tell me now. Tell me true. Listening.]]**

  
[Please, no ends, only beginnings. Don’t let that bastard win, John!]  
  
[I _killed_ a man for you…remember? Just _now_. Are we even on that, at least? If not the other.]  
  
“Don’t. Please don’t. Leave me.”  
  
The universe remains stubbornly in pieces. For centuries, in Sherlock time. Until.  


**[[Talk to me?]]**

“Go. John.”  
  
(((Do not leave me go.)))  


  
**[[Sherlock? What is it** you **—how can** I **—why** are **you such a great tit, always and ever?** What **will it take to ever sort you out, to force you into a box, something I can stick my fingers in, stick my head around, when all you ever do is burst out and blind me, again and again. Sherlock? Useless, _useless_. Oh…here, then. I’m a fool, aren’t I. And you’re worse even than I. ‘Regret’, my arse. Come back here. **_Fool **.]]**_  


  
A hand comes down, ever so slowly, sifting fingers across Sherlock’s hair. Gentle, firm, too; fingertips gouging in, like a mild punishment. Or…a prod.  


**[[Here, then. Better? I should say so, not that you deserve it…except I really probably think you do. I’m not the fool, Sherlock. I. Know. You.]]**

  
It does prod; he’s instantly back on again, on stage, shocked alive, as if John’s gone and plugged him in to live feed, fed him a million volts.  
  
“John. I am…sorry.”

  
{He remembers now, what it _is_ he is meant to say; he’d been drifting before. He cannot afford it, the sorrow is too large and unwieldy inside.}  
  
“I regret deeply.” {He will speak this sentence for _ever after_. He knows all the words, now to make them truth. Absolute. Outside his skin and not only just inside it.}  
  
“Please don’t—please don’t say to go.” {He will _not_ go, of course, and _not_ close his mouth on these sounds he’s making, disjointed, nor bite back all he desires to say aloud to John—never again, while he lives, will he allow a man like Moriarty to stifle him, or his truths. They are real, as alive as he is, knowing John is right here, safe and furious. Damaged, yes, but his John. He. Will. Say.  


**[[…Sherlock. Stop that.]]**

  
There are fingers, just there, in the first voluntary touch John has offered Sherlock in three years—they are undeniably present, floating atop his hair, his scalp, his consciousness, and Sherlock is transported.  
  
“Sherlock.”  
  
And it’s a wealth, right there, in that one word, and it is not forgiveness (that will be a long time coming; but? He has time again—the world has restarted its stupidly important spinning) and it is not exactly…precisely…capitulation, but it is…something.  
  
“Jo—!”  
  
[From John.]{To Sherlock}  
  
“I’ve only just come! (Ah, life’s little ironies). Just..come. Don’t say to go—John.”  
  
Something Good. To be kept.  
  
“No, no.”  
  
{Not stolen}  
  
“You…great…”  
  
Fingertips sweep his one ear, and they are all that is John Watson, every molecule. Sherlock loves them, as he understands ‘love’ to be (and it’s different from the experience in the kitchen, and his memories of Before; so completely different, and likely MORE, and then also Better.]  
  
“Sher…lock.”  


**[[Sherlock.]]**

  
And Sherlock _can_ cry, perhaps a bit more; no, a great deal more. Great heaving gouts of it, as he’s never done before, nor allowed himself to for ages and ages, and John can rub that hand, that palm and those fingers, through his lank oily hair, and express care.  
  
It goes on.  
  
“Sherlock. You will pay for this, pay and pay, you know that, right? I’m not letting this go, Sherlock Holmes. You great bastard. Look at you, just look.”  


**[[Bastard! Mine. Lost…and found again. Idiot. Sherlock. Miracle.]]**

  
Express ‘care’.  [John’s a doctor; that’s what they do!]  


**[[Git. Mine. And never not.]]**

  
“I don’t what they did to you—assuming it was a they? Moriarty’s dead, but it had to be him—his fault. I don’t know, Sherlock, and you’ll be telling me all about it, don’t even think you won’t, and you’re not allowed to say another word out of that bloody mouth of yours till I have a real chance to look you over in hospital—“  
  
John grasps Sherlock’s scalp firmly, hauls his head by two buzzing, ringing ears and treats him to an all-knowing, all-searching stare, very clinical and terribly, forthrightly stern, before he unceremoniously drops Sherlock’s head back onto his own lap. His fingers follow, though.  
  
“Do you understand? Sherlock.”  
  
Sherlock wriggles under the unrelenting grip to his hair, exultant and feeling wonderful, really very …good—like himself?—and welcome safe home again, which is nonsense, because home is a place, it’s flat or a house, not a human being. But John defies that and he is everything home to Sherlock.  
  
He makes a noise at John’s thigh that’s wordless and mindlessly happy, as sharply ‘up’ as he was cast down, and thoughts rush about his Palace garden like a carousel of teddy bears, frolicking. First this one and then the other; so absurd.  
  
“This is _your last chance_ , Sherlock, so _don’t_ muck it up again, don’t even go there—oh, fuck, who am I _even_ fooling?”  
  
And…perhaps it is that Sherlock will never have John’s arse again at his wanting (sex, as a thing to do, it was good, it was John; he could do that again and sober would be better yet, likely, having all his faculties), and perhaps it is that they will never again kiss, and that is a pity [he would want that, and so much, having been rudely awakened, as it were, (not his choice, but then impulse, unleashed)] but that’s all right—just his transport again, branching out unwanted, as he’s explained over and over again to so many people, but especially John—he’ll always talk to John, even if the words are all wrong, wrong, won’t he? There some truth, that] and perhaps…perhaps it will be years, literally, before he and John are what they were again—once? Before John trusts him willingly again. Before he accepts regret is a state normal boring people have to live with but still continue breathing.  
  
(John is amazing; he can manage to live this way. Sherlock can learn, though, he’s sure. For John.)  
  
And perhaps (Sherlock’s an unrepentant pirate; he’ll grow bored with waiting to understand all of this pain and sorrow;  it’s inevitable) he might force it, one day, when the day bodes Good. If John allows it, or even hints he might be agreeable. No! Not what he did this morning, never that.  
  
But a kiss, just a kiss. From his lips to John’s lips. Or perhaps to cheek, or hair, or maybe this lovely belly he’s his chin tucked in, all this wonderful weight and give what he’s got his red damp face buried against, it’s so comforting, so alive…Right, a kiss, that’s all. Something simple, stupid. Keep it simple, stupid.  
  
[Maybe.] [Maybe not.] [Binary code.]  


**[[Mine, again.]]**

  
“I do hope you’re actually listening to me, Sherlock? You _are_ , aren’t you? Better be. Hospital. Food. Sle—“  
  
 _Sleep, yes_.  
  
Rest the weary. For now it is enough for Sherlock to lay his head in John’s lap, and know it is John’s and no other’s. For no other’s will ever do.  
  
[And he will breathe in and he will breathe out, and it is dull, tremendously, and he’s never been quite so grateful for doing so. Never.]  
  
 **Fin.**


End file.
